XII.  At the settlement at Palapag there has been a conflict with hunger and disease; yet the Indians have so conducted themselves that the sick have not lacked the necessary services.  Likewise Ours have made such provision that the poor were cared for from the harvest; for at their gate they daily served food to more than seventy persons.  Their newly-built church and their sodality make them hopeful of great good, for their beginnings are such that six hundred of full age have presented themselves at the sacred font for purification; while I should reckon the number of children at eight hundred, the greater part of whom have gone the straight way to heaven.  One of Ours was called to a little infant which was said to be sick, to baptize it; and he refused, partly because he thought the matter was not so pressing, partly because he wished to teach the Indians the custom of bringing their little ones to the churches.  At last, overcome by the importunities of those who asked him, he went thither; but when he could perceive in the child not the least sign of illness, he was about to return without baptizing it.  But when he looked at the boy again he seemed to be silently warned by it not to deny it that benefit.  At last, when he had complied, and when everything had been performed duly and in order, the child expired in the very arms of its sponsor.  By this event the father was rendered joyful, but still more cautious not to think that time should be allowed any advantage in matters of this kind; for, as he said, he would rather suffer all the ills of sea and land if he might open heaven to this single little boy.  There have been seen other signs (not a few) of the singular care extended by divine providence to this tribe and Ours.  Such a one was this.  An Indian was wrapped in the folds of a serpent eight feet long, but, groaning forth the saving name of Jesus, he was released.  Again:  when there was a deficiency of that kind of food which it is lawful to eat in the days of Lent, a boat on the beach, brought by I know not whom, freely supplied fishes of a kind not usual there.  Again, when a church was on the point of falling, the Indians were frightened out from it by a tremendous roar; and, because the mass had not been finished, it did not fall before the father had taken refuge in the sacristy, the chalice being safe, with the sacred images on the abandoned altar.  These things we mention, passing over those persons to whom God has been pleased to grant good of soul or body through Ours.  To this establishment there was sent ten years ago Francisco Simon, a lay brother; he died on the day on which twenty years before he had entered the Society.  And although through all this interval of time he had neglected none of the things for which a good religious may be praised, yet the nearer he approached to death, the more content he seemed in doing them.  The garden, the kitchen, the dining-room, the sacristy, the workshops, the other places in which he labored,